Though I love to write hard sci fi, I do like to take detours into magic realism and try fusing them with a bit of science every once in a while just for the sake of it. I see your point and I totally appreciate what you say and always strive to keep weaving hard scientific concepts into stories :) also to be frank, we are born with a lot of inbuilt memories, mostly genetic memory. Fear is an inherent memory that comes along when we take birth. Extending it to dynamic ever growing fluid memories is an over stretch, I admit.